I'm spending the summer banding around the east (in West Virginia right now), so I thought I might have a unique opportunity to throw in my 2 centavos on this, since I am seeing some of my first Acadian Flycatchers, and am getting to study them right now pretty much every day. My first impression of this bird is that the throat does not look very white in the photos, though the bird is surrounded by leaves, so maybe the color is light bounced off the foliage. How did the throat look in the field? Also, the eye ring does not look like the bold, evenly round, white eye-ring (to me they look almost spectacle-like) that I am seeing on Acadian Flycatchters our here. The head shape seems to have a bit of a crest, and the tertials, although darkening away from the rachis, seem quite green-centered; which is not great for any Eastern Empid (altought I do agree that the tertial and greater secondary covert edgings look interestingly crisp). Anyway, just from
looking at the photos, my impression of the bird would be to put it into the Western/Yellow-bellied camp (leaning towards western, with the eye-ring and head shape), but that is just from these photos. I'm looking forward to hearing other opinions.